On one level, I enjoyed the fact that Soderberg’s post was analyzing how hip hop was being used as a vehicle to allow Apatow’s largely white characters express their vileness at the expense of hip hop.

On another level the post was incredibly misogynistic. I will deal with the two issues separately.

Soderberg’s general thesis is the Apatow uses hip hop as a vehicle to allow the characters to express the most vile things about society which implies that this is what hip hop represents in our culture. He cites a Apatow’s use of hip hop in “Walk Hard” and “Knocked Up” and “40 Year Old Virgin” as evidence. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen “Walk Hard”. He writes,

Recall the intro to ‘Knocked-Up’ which uses Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s classic ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’ (Armond White: “white boys clowning to Old Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”) with emphasis on Dirty’s “Ooh baby I like it raw” hook to make it really obvious and funny what this movie’s already going to be about. Think of the constant hip-hop slang used by everyone but Steve Carrell’s character in ‘The 40 Year-Old Virgin’ and how it’s essentially used to represent just how vulgar and crass everyone’s become and how stupidwhite people are for adopting any part of this culture.

He also goes on to write that,

In the Apatow and company universe, which is one that despite all the blowjob and weed jokes is incredibly conservative- dumb critics say this is why his movies “have heart”- rap music and culture are one of the biggest signifiers of how low things have sunk and how distant people are from their “real” emotions: Rap as ruiner of everything.

I think that the situation is a bit more complicated than that.

I would argue that the vileness ( hyper violent masculinity, hypersexuality) in hip hop started off in mainstream society, was adopted by minorities and is reflected in hip hop. Furthermore, it is being used by Apatow via the characters in his movies to express dysfunction, albeit flippantly.

There is a tendency to separate the pathology of the mainstream from the pathology from the hood, however, at the end of the day they will always be connected.

It is one big dysfunctional ping pong game.

Now for the misogyny in Soderberg’s piece. The misogyny is there period point blank and it sat there glaring at me. In the following excerpt, Soderberg intended on describing how hip hop is used as story support for a scene, and that unlike country music, it isn’t presented with empathy. He writes,

Leslie Mann’s bar-slut in ‘Virgin’ is speeding home, too drunk to drive, blaring and singing along to Missy Elliot’s ‘Get Ur Freak On’, which is sort of real-drunk white sluts love Missy Elliott- but it’s sort of the icing on the cake for why this girl’s so terrible. It’s not presented with any of the sympathy given to a whiny loser who collects action figures, rides a bike, and hasn’t ever dropped his dick in a pussy.

While his intentions were to point out the discrepancy between Apatow’s treatment of hip hop versus country I couldn’t help but notice that the term slut was used not just once but twice in the same sentence. Was that necessary? Was he trying to be provocative?

The second thing that stood out to me in that paragraph was the phrase “and hasn’t ever dropped a dick in a pussy”.

What? P*ssy’s aren’t sitting around like ashtrays waiting to receive a deposit. A p*ssy isn’t a garbage can, basketball hoop or an ATM machine waiting for a deposit. P*ssy’s are attached to people.

These people are women.

(All bold emphasis M. Dot’s.)

M.dot is a blogger based in Brooklyn and the Bay Area, she can be reached at m.dotwrites@gmail.com

Race, Culture, and Identity in a Colorstruck World

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Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations, and of course, the inevitable Keanu Reeves John Cho newsflashes.

Latoya Peterson (DC) is the Owner and Editor (not the Founder!) of Racialicious, Arturo García (San Diego) is the Managing Editor, Andrea Plaid (NYC) is the Associate Editor. You can email us at team@racialicious.com.